David R. Koepsell, J.D./Ph.D.

David is an entrepreneur, author, philosopher, attorney (retired), and educator whose recent research focuses on the nexus of science, technology, ethics, and public policy. He is the founder and CEO of Encrypgen, LLC.

He has provided commentary regarding ethics, society, religion, and technology on: MSNBC, Fox News Channel, The Guardian, The Washington Times, NPR Radio, Radio Free Europe, Air America, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and the Associated Press, among others. He has been a tenured Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management in the Netherlands, Visiting Professor at UNAM, Instituto de Filosoficas and the Unidad Posgrado, Mexico, Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives at COMISIÓN NACIONAL DE BIOÉTICA in Mexico, and Asesor de Rector at UAM Xochimilco. For full academic CV, click here.

Education/Honors

State University of New York at Buffalo

1997 Ph.D., Philosophy Department, February 27, 1997.
Dissertation: The Ontology of Cyberspace: Law, Philosophy, and the Future of Intellectual Property.

2014 “Human Research Ethics Committees in Technical Universities” with Willem-Paul Brinkman and Sylvia Pont, in Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, Vol. 9, Issue 3 pp.67-71.

2014 “Principals, Agents and the Intersection between Scientists and Policy-Makers: Reflections on the H5N1 Controversy” with Keelie Murdock in Frontiers, Public Health- Infectious Diseases special issue on Dual-use life science research and biosecurity in the 21st Century: Social, Technical, Policy, and Ethical Challenges, editor: Kathleen Vogel. Vol. 2 DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2014.00109.

2009 "Dealing With Socially Constructed Concepts in an Ontology" letter to editor, Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics,, Vol 4, Issue 2, June, pp.75-76.

2009 "Creating a Controlled Vocabulary for the Ethics of Human Research: Towards a Biomedical Ethics Ontology" with Robert Arp, Jennifer Fostel, and Barry Smith in Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, Vol. 4, Issue 1, March, pp 43-58.

1996 "The Ontology of Cyberspace: Preliminary Questions
and Comments," State University of New York at Buffalo, Department of
Computer Science - Technical Report 95-9.

Book Chapters:

2016 “ICT's Architecture of Freedom” with Philip Serracino Inglott for Freedom and Property of Information: The Philosophy of Law Meets the Philosophy of Technology, Mireille Hildebrandt and Bibi van de Berg, editors, (UK: Routledge).

2013 "'It's Existential': Negative Space and Nothingness in The Ice Storm" in The Philosophy of Ang Lee, Barkman, Adam, Robert Arp and James McRae, ed. (Lexington, KT: University Press of Kentucky)pp.243-250.

2011 “International Law and Legal Positivism”, in Sam Muller, Stavros
Zouridis, Morly Frishman and Laura Kistemaker (eds.), Law of the Future and the Future of Law, Torkel Opsahl Academic, pp. 375-384.

2010 “Developing a Master's Degree Program in Science and the Public” in Improving Science Spirits and Building a Harmonious Society, Paul Kurtz and F. Ren, (eds.) (Chinese Science and Technology Press), pp. 84-93.

2008 "From Guano Islands to the Moon: Institutionalized
Squatting and Property Rights," in The Mystery of Capital and the New
Philosophy of Social Reality, Mark, Smith and Erlich (eds.) (Chicago: Open Court).

2007 "Carl Menger and Exact Theory in the Social
Sciences" in Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise and
Moral Judgments? Co-edited with Paul Kurtz, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Press).

2007 "The Practice of Humanism in Marriage and Family
Counseling" with D. Mercurio-Riley, in The Role of Religion in Marriage
and Family Counseling (New York: NY: Taylor & Francis)

2010 - 2015: Floris Kreiken, Delft University of Technology, "Rights, Information, and Expression: Natural and State Monopolies, and Public Values in Information Infrastructures," PhD Project (funded by Next Generation Infrastructures Foundation).

2013 “Intellectual Property, Genes, and the Commons,” CONABIO, National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity, Mexico City, June 20.

2013 “Justice as Validity in Adolf Reinach's Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law” North American Society for Early Phenomenology, Describing and Exploring Early Phenomenology conference, London, Ontario, Canada, June 12.

2012 "Security: whose responsibility?" at the Centre for Advanced Security Theory, University of Copenhagen, Oct 22.

2012 "A bulwark at the border of science and technology in the age of dual use" Biennial Conference of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST), Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark, Oct. 20.

2011 "Trust Me, I'm an Artist: Mutate or Die" ethics panel, Trust Me I’m an Artist: Towards an Ethics of Art/Science Collaboration” is led by artist Anna Dumitriu in collaboration with Professor Bobbie Farsides (Chair of Ethics, Brighton and Sussex Medical School) in collaboration with the Waag Society and The University of Leiden, De Waag, Amsterdam, Dec. 10.

2010 "Abstract Technical Artifacts? Resolving Confusion about Ideas, Ex[pressions, Types, and Tokens," The First Dutch-German Workshop on CHallenges for the Philosophy of Technology in the 21st Century, TU-Berlin, Germany, Aug. 26-27.

2007 “Rights to One's Own Genes: The Human Genome
as a Commons,” Human Rights for the 21st Century Rights of the
Person to Technological Self-Determination, IHEU- Appignani Humanist
Center for Bioethics and Institute for Ethics and Emerging
Technologies, United Nations, NYC May 11-13

2007 "Blasphemy and South Park," Ontario, Canada:
Centre for Inquiry- Toronto, University of Guelph, and University of
Waterloo, March 30-31

2006 "The Obsolescence of Obsolescence: The Ethics of
Life-Extension," Yale University, Perspectives of Aging Working Group,
Dec. 13.

1998 Co-director, Applied Ontology: A Marvin Farber Conference
on Law and Institutions in Society. April 24-25, With Barry Smith.

1997 The Metaphysics of Cyberspace The History of the Concepts
of Space, sponsored by Department of Philosophy, Center for Cognitive Science,
and the National Center for Geographic Information, State University of New
York at Buffalo, April 19.